When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. 'I am innocent of this man’s blood,' he said. 'It is your responsibility!' All the people answered, 'His blood is on us and on our children!'

This passage has no counterpart in the other Gospels and is probably related to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE.[2] Ulrich Luz describes it as "redactional fiction" invented by the author of the Matthew Gospel.[3] Some writers, viewing it as part of Matthew's anti-Jewish polemic, see in it the seeds of later Christian antisemitism.[4]